You're Nowhere Without the Right Clientele

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Hot on the heels of releasing their latest album, the Clientele are coming back to San Diego on Sept. 12, and it's not too soon.

The U.K. band just released their sixth album, Minotaur, on Aug. 31, and as their label Merge Records puts it, it's a collection of "rain-soaked maps from a decade of exploration." On the album, the band continues to take its inspiration from the corners and castoffs of their home base, London; from the Beatle-esque title track to the intense interludes of “Jerry” (MP3), Lisbon is quintessential Clientele.

Screen Grabs: Why We Love the Casbah

When asked how he finds his inspiration, lead singer Alasdair MacLean said that it comes, in part, from the books that he read as a kid: "I think there was a terrific sense of myth and dread in children's writing of the 1960s and 1970s... It made the everyday seem dreamlike, subtly dangerous. It's that hallucinatory ambiance that I loved as a child, and it's something I've tried to express in the music of the Clientele."

The band's previous album, Bonfires on the Heath, is a collection of dreamscapes with that "sense of myth and dread." Allmusic called it "the most perfect, autumnal, English pop record imaginable." The album was featured on Best of 2009 lists at Pitchfork and elsewhere. If you're still not convinced that you should check them out, read Owl and Bear's review of their March 4 Casbah show..

Upcoming Concerts

The band will play there again on Sept. 12. San Diego's excellent Little White Teeth will open. Get your tickets here.